Overtime can make a big difference for people living paycheck to paycheck. And, according to a new report, a single change to the rules about who’s eligible for overtime pay would expand the number of low-wage workers who qualify for that extra pay by a whopping 5.9 million.
Right now, workers may earn no more than $455 per week (or $23,660 per year) in order to be eligible for overtime. But under the new rule change proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor in July , that threshold would go up to $970 per week or $50,440 per year. According to a new report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and MomsRising , the majority of those those newly covered workers would be women.